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Food Safety

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics

Synonyms

Food regulation; Food risks; Health; Responsibility and liability; Risk assessment; Toxicology

Introduction

The term “food safety” has come to be associated with a variety of technical and regulatory mechanisms designed to minimize the risk of morbidity and mortality associated with human consumption of food. The ethics of food safety comprises philosophical questions that arise in connection with conceptualization of risks tied to food consumption, the assignment of responsibility and liability for precautionary measures and for actualized harms, and interpretive ambiguity that occurs in the performance of regulatory standards and precautionary measures, including enforcement. More broadly, the emergence of food safety as a regulatory and conceptual paradigm is typical of the social, political, and cultural themes that define late capitalism and globalization. In this connection, contestation over the safety of food has become an element in broader forms of resistance to...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, 503 South Kedzie Hall, 48824, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Prof. Paul B. Thompson

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  1. Prof. Paul B. Thompson
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Correspondence to Paul B. Thompson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan State University Dept. Philosophy, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Paul B. Thompson

  2. University of North Texas Dept. Philosophy & Religion Studies, Denton, Texas, USA

    David M. Kaplan

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Thompson, P.B. (2014). Food Safety. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_468-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_468-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6167-4

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